The Low Country

             I am one of the low countries and, though predictions of cataclysms rise and fall, I'll probably always be one of the low countries.

            My people are as statuesque as brioches. Even my monuments refuse to soar. I am best remembered for a little bronze boy, not much more than life-sized. He stands somewhere on a side street near my Grand Place in my capital city. What does he do? He pees.

            The world needs laughs, and to make a joke you need a punch line. It's not the role I would have chosen, but then, I don't recall being given a list with checkmarks, do you? I don't underestimate my value. If, when you hear the word Flemish, you smile because you can't help thinking to yourself "Phlegmish," so be it; I made you smile. I'll save you my Walloons for another day when you're feeling blue.

            You see — I am much in demand. Without me, who in this world would envy Canada? I lend dignity to Poland, whom I often look to as a role model of forbearance. And the sad, bony faces of my Gallic neighbors, what would soften their sharp edges if not for me? Go ahead, ask the French why I have burn marks on my face. Never will you see a nation so united as when they chorus: "bobbing for frites!"

            I have many neighbors and they have all tried to annex me. I have been wanted by the Romans, the Franks, by Burgundy, Spain, Austria, Germany, and, of course, my above-mentioned neighbor to the immediate west. I have been wanted and, it's true, I have been had. My people are so accustomed to battle that in times of peace they carry on all by themselves — hear the war cries of the gutturals and the nasals! I plug my ears when the babble grows loud, and I try to remain centered.

            I have made peace even with my trying neighbors to the north, the Wind and the Sea. They have tired me; they have sanded me to the bone. What I tell myself with each rising tide is this: how they need me! What is a sea without a shore? Here is my secret: I still let them slice away at me, but I have developed a rind as hard as any aged Gouda, and their yield is meager.

            It hasn't always been so. I have worked at my level-headedness. There was a time when I would pray nightly: surely you can spare an alp, a Pyrenee, a catskill. Mon Dieu! I would call to the night sky, Mijn Gott! Mein Gott! For God's sake! (Using all my tongues to be on the safe side, for God is surely a polyglot too.)

            How I would have liked a little distraction from the noisy, unending plain of myself. A great wall. A little variety, a little spice trade, the bounty of hills and valleys and the cleavage in between.

            But I am one of the low countries and am likely to remain one of the low countries. When I feel the old nagging envy, I have my chocolates and my beers to console me. And when I look upon Luxembourg, my negligible little neighbor to the south, I feel like a queen.

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